So, it’s only been three months since the OMGZOMBIEPOCALYPSE event, and already these people have resorted to cannibalism. That’s quite a stretch, particularly since – of all the people we’ve met so far – they seem to be the least likely to go hungry. I mean, they have the ingredients to bake biscuits. I don’t know how long I would have to eat biscuits before I became so bored with them that I felt the need to add people, but I’m pretty sure it would be longer than this.

Also they really are terrible cannibals. I mean, they’re feeding the group, which is going to cost them a lot of food. Also, what kind of idiot would keep their slaughterhouse in this condition? Since they’re slaughtering for food and not for giggles, this place ought to look like a butcher shop and not like a serial killer’s playroom. A butcher who kept his kitchen in this condition wouldn’t live long.

Here is my outcome for episode 2:

The end-of-episode choice was kind of odd. I felt strongly that the right thing to do would be to wait an hour or so – or perhaps until morning – and then take the stuff. However, you can’t make that choice. You can only take part in the (possible) theft or refuse.

Of course, you might be worried about walkers showing up while waiting for morning. It’s kind of hard to get a sense of how viable that is because the walkers are so plot-driven. People made the trip to and from the farm multiple times without incident and we’re in a rural area where zombies should be very sparse. Then again, the army that swarmed the dairy indicates there’s always a crowd of them lurking just offstage, waiting for their cue.

I don’t know. It was an odd choice.

Also, I love the attention to detail on the station wagon. Note the interior, particularly the steering wheel. I haven’t seen a car like that in decades, but just glancing at it reminds me of the days when interiors were made out of cheap plastic and they were always infused with the smell of old cigarettes. Someone built and textured the inside of this slightly exotic (due to age) car and was careful to get the details just so. And that interior is on screen for, what? Ten seconds? Thanks to the people who put time into that. That’s dedication.

I generally think Episode 2 is the weakest of the bunch in terms of writing and thematic content. However, I think it probably has the best cinematography and set design. And even this, the weakest of the episodes, resonated with me more than any of the television episodes that I’ve seen.

I’m a little disappointed. In my playthrough (I tried to save Larry so that may have something to do with it), Lilly shoot Andy and left him defenseless. From there, you can beat on him over and over again. After awhile, they cut to a scene with the group overlooking you and watching. From there, you can choose to keep beating him up, or leaving him to his fate. Watching the whole group stare at we, I couldn’t finish it. I felt like it would be best to leave.

I loved it because it felt like I was a part of such a great cinematic moment.

Also, Shamus, I am curious as to why you chose to abandon the goods in the car. I did too, but mostly because I had already felt like it would be wrong and then Clementine reinforced that line of thinking. Considering your logic and mine deviated quite a bit this episode (I chopped his leg off, helped Lilly and spared both brothers), it’s interesting that we agreed here when them majority picked the other option.

Yo man, we only agree on zero choices (actually a surprisingly high 14/25, given how butts-wrong you are most of the time) and yet we agreed on that choice too.

Personally, I figured that the others would take the stuff anyway, but I wanted to make a point the Clem’s view was definitely NOT ‘wrong.’ That her line of thinking was still valid, despite how the world had changed.

That choice seems pretty even. I think it has to do with Clementine, and wanting to protect her. Otherwise, if I found a car running in the middle of the woods I’d assume the owners left and are dead by now. I’d drive off with the car.

Hmm. A sickle is a simple weapon but Commoners are only proficient in a single Simple weapon and no others. I think it’s pretty unlikely he’d have taken Sickles, so he’s probably taking a -4 on all attack rolls.

Also, I find it interesting that when you don’t shoot Andy the popup says “You spared Andy’s life” rather than “You left Andy to get eaten by Walkers.” The text is framing the decision in a way which the scene doesn’t carry – like Shamus said, it’s arguably the ‘worse’ choice since rather than dying from a gunshot (to the head?) he gets to be omnomnomed. Poetic, but arguably crueler. I guess Clementine doesn’t have to see it I guess. Maybe the text should be “You spared Clementine seeing Andy die.”

I was kind of annoyed because I chose to save him and then they killed him grizzly. It was really strange they seemed to be playing you for mercy choices and having you revel in their horrible deaths immediately after.

Also I accidentally told Andy his brother was dead when he wasn’t because I’d forgotten I saved him, but I admit to having some glee at seeing him break like that. I’d probably do it again

Killing both is rare, but if I recall from their commentary, sparing BOTH is also rare – they said most people killed Danny and saw how it affected Clem, then stopped punching Andy when the crowd shot happened. Which is exactly what I did. The two-state % bar is doing those two choices a disservice.

Clem’s appearance is less ninja-like if you try to help Larry, because it’s Lily who saves you instead of Kenny, so you could infer the two of them left together.

—

“How did he get up the stairs?” was addressed in the commentary, too, though it needn’t be – you were out cold long enough to get locked in a meat locker. They probably moved Mark back to the bathroom for storage around then – though they should’ve locked him up better, of course.

—

Very very minor point, but I just noticed: if you shoot Jolene, it says, “you had Lee shoot Jolene.” All the other ones are phrased where you are Lee. Odd. Guess they switched it up at some point and missed one.

The thing about “false choice” here doesn’t really fly by me. The game, on your first playthrough, seems really solid (almost?) no matter which way you go about things. It isn’t until later playthroughs, if you do play it again, that the illusion breaks down. It’s like watching a magic trick again. It is essentially linear, but not in an obvious way for your first run. Heck, most of the people I’ve seen strongly complain about it elsewhere, some of which even went as far to say it ruins the game, were in love until they tried a second playthrough, at which point apparently all their positive experience with the game was magically invalidated by the revelation that the programmers didn’t make several games’ worth of content for all the branches they assumed were there.

Besides, while the plot doesn’t change much, how the other characters think of you (and how you think of the characters; I’ve seen people who went one way arguing with others who went a different way about whether certain characters, particularly Kenny, were great or assholes because their different actions resulted in those characters behaving differently, with both convinced they were right because their experiences were that different) and the interpersonal relationships do change, and with a game so focused on the characters and built upon them, I’d argue that’s pretty huge in and of itself.

Really? I sided with Kenny on… Heck, not even everything, just the important stuff (I didn’t take the food, for example, but I stood up for Duck and helped off Larry) and Kenny was basically my greatest ally for… Every scene we were together, barring one or two tense moments. And after those he was on my side again anyway.

I find it odd that the car is the most important part of this whole story. I’m not even kidding, it sets up the two last episodes and is their driving force. This one little detail.

I also find it odd you killed both brothers. I didn’t kill either, mostly because I wanted to show Clem that murder and revenge (for Mark) are not the best paths, and that mercy is still in the world. Well, for one brother. The older guy is pretty much going to die.

Episode 2 is by far the weakest of all the episodes. For me it goes:

Episode 5- Most gut-retching thing I’ve ever had to go through in a video game. It has to be one of the defining moments in video gaming

Episode 1- Set up the cast, made me care for the characters and made me form opinions on all the characters, and introduced someone who had only heard of the Walking Dead in passing understand the world.

Episode 3- Turns your would upside down, and makes you feel helpless during the whole thing

Episode 4- I didn’t really get why we were doing things in episode four, and I saw the “big twist” about Crawford being full of zombies from a mile away. Boring with lots of throw away characters.

Episode 2- I seemed like they didn’t know what they wanted to do for episode 3, so they just opened up a dictionary and randomly picked the first word they found: Cannibals

My order is 3,4,2,1,5. I’ll get to 5 later, the puzzles in 1 were basically badly designed to my mind and there wasn’t much character growth, it was just introduction. 3 was a lovely change of pace with very good moments and also the one point of optimism in the whole series. I might even rate two a little higher, the twist didn’t get me, but I loved Mark, and how it looked and the tension and the time skips

With the exception of not chopping Davids leg off and killing both brothers me and you had the same results Shamus. I find it kinda of interesting how you where willing to kill the brothers, but not take the food. The same for the revers that the majority of players seemed to have taken. The line people draw between killing defiantly nasty people and stealing from unknown people is… fascinating…
Would people like to throw out there reasoning for there stand on this one?

All the lights are on, and its completely open. SOMEONE has been in or near the car in a very short time-frame and, since it is obviously still working, someone is still using this car. If the lights were all off, and I had had to break into that car, or even just the lights off and the car not on, I would have taken the stuff, ’cause it screams “No one is around me, please take my delectable goodies and pic-a-nic baskets Bubu!”

While I would agree that Episode 2 might be the weakest in terms of thematic content and writing, my weakest episode so far (still have yet to play through ep. 5) would be 3. Not because of the writing, but the pacing. 2 was building up nicely to a climax and the fight in the rain where it felt like 3 just would not end, like the writers just kept passing by good stopping points and continuing on until I started getting tired at the lack of a conclusion. So by that standard I’m also a little more partial to 4 as well because I felt like it was decently paced and structured.

That’s part of the, well, “charm” of episode 3. The feeling that it would never end. You are sick and tired off everything that is happening, of everything going to Hell in a Hand basket, and when it finally seems like it’s going to end, you get even more problems thrown at you. It’s tiring, its tension and stress building, and its a good episode. It does throw some curve balls out there that no one could see coming, though. Not their best, but not their worst either.

I understand what you’re saying there, but it just didn’t ring that way for me, mainly because the writers kept on going after an excellent stopping point to do some stuff completely unrelated to everything else in the episode. An independent plot thread crammed into the last third.

Individually I liked every part of the episode, but it felt too long in a bad way for me.

The thing that differentiates this and me3 the most is:
Shepard is an emotionless brick.She isnt affected by the story at all(unless you count the glowing red scars).Lee on the other hand is an established character.So all of the choices in mass effect dont affect the player at all,while everything you do here affects you even if it doesnt reflect on anyone else.

You managed to perfectly phrase my thoughts on why the “fake choices” work very well for me in this game, while not working at all in, say, mass effect, despite the latter actually arguably having more consequence. For example, the choice to kill or spare the St. John brothers have absolutely no bearing on anything after the fact,, apart from a few lines with Clementine about the morality of killing people. So you could argue that this choice is bullshit, because it never has any effect on the game, but the point is that it does have an effect, on the player.

And obviously, as with everything in The Walking Dead, if you’re not invested in it, it all falls short.

Long time lurker first time poster. Just wanted to say thanks for talking me into buying this game. I had a blast playing it, and look forward to seeing the next three episodes played through.

As for this episode (of the game not Spoiler Warning) I felt it was probably the second strongest of the five episode endings. Only the kidnapping of Clementine had my emotions riding higher than the fights with Andy and Danny.

According to some writers you should never base a character off one person, but combine 2 or 3, because we tend to view even our close friends in quite one dimensional ways. Also most people are normal and mixing shakes things up a bit and makes it interesting

This makes a lot of sense with Doug, considering that the development team is a huge fan of the character and even have a ‘Save Doug’ facebook page. In all likelihood they’d just projecting their feelings for their friend onto a fairly boring character.

I was impressed that he managed to fix that camcorder while in the short time between leaving the farm and coming on the car, while they were also talking, he was seemingly doing nothing and they were investigating the car itself.

I was actually wondering how they’d do that scene if you saved Carley instead of Doug. That’s…actually really disappointing. It would’ve been better, I think, if you didn’t get to see what was recorded if you didn’t save Doug. After all, he’s the tech guy, he does tech things. Carley is the sharpshooter, she shoots things. You don’t save Doug? You don’t get any insight into Jolene or the Bandits.

Yeah, looking back on it the lights being on makes it really obvious that the car isn’t abandoned. At the time however I didn’t think of that, and didn’t care, all I saw was easy supplies after going through hell trying to get a meal and I took them. If nothing else this episode works fantastically at preparing and priming people’s mindsets for making this single vital choice.

I knew the car wasn’t abandoned, for the same reason – it was clearly a recently vacated car, not a long-idle one. I figured the owners were taking a whiz in the forest or something, actually.

And while I did tell Kenny “We’ll survive without it”, I didn’t mean it in a “we don’t need food” sort of way, but in a “we’ll find another way to get food” sort of way. But I might be a real-life Paladin, so maybe I’m just weird.

Also, I think that LOOTING the car is kind of odd. It’s a car. If you want the stuff, why take it and leave the car? Have everyone walk back home, and a couple of people sit in the car. (And turn the lights off! Gah! Do you know how hard it is to get a jump these days?) You’ve go a nice zombieshelter while you wait.

If the owner comes back, then you can see if they’re worth trading with, or if they want to join the party. If they don’t come back, then you have food AND a working vehicle. Keny is so excited to get the stupid RV working, but a caravan is a much better approach. That way you’re not instantly stranded the moment something breaks, and when one vehicle needs parts or gas, or can use one of the others to obtain it.

Then again, I can believe that this sort of forward thinking behavior might be a little beyond this group. They’re in the dark, some friends are dead, they’ve just seen some nasty business, they’re tired, and hungry.

Car can stay lit up for quite a while(several hours),so if your definition of recently is not a few hours,calling out and waiting a few minutes is more than enough to see if someone will come to claim it.

It takes more than “several hours” for me to figure someone just walked away from their massive stash of supplies. While car batteries can last running literally everything – headlights, dome light, “the keys are in the ignition” beeping – for three or four hours, the fact that it was doing all of those things is what was a clear indication to me of “not abandoned”.

Abandoning a clearly functional vehicle in that manner just makes no sense to me. Even if it was out of gas, I don’t think you’d leave the lights on and the keys in.

Unless you stepped out to do your thing,and was attacked by zombies.Or bandits.Or stepped in a bear trap(in which case though thered be screams).Or if you are a nutcase chasing after your wife to brutally murder her when she tried to escape from you.

I don’t find that line of thinking very appealing when it comes to making moral choices. They could just be outside of hearing range, which in the middle of the woods would be somewhat limited. Whatever the case may be, you don’t really have any way of *knowing* the situation. Waiting for a couple hours is the least you should do if you care about staying moral in the apocalypse at all.

A sperm cell isn’t a person. While I’m not sure what qualifies as a person in bullshit zombie biology, there’s no way sperm cells are advanced enough on their own to become zombies. Also, how would you know the difference between a zombie sperm cell and a normal one?

As for the fetus thing, that’s not a plot hole, just really horrifying.

Because that way they couldn’t tell their victim how tasty he or she was and what part they will use for their next meal. As Shamus pointed out, they went for cannibalism really quickly. Whatever they say is bullshit and they are doing it for the evulz. Oh, they might believe it, Andy is in pretty deep denial about whole “we lured you here to murder and eat you one after another” thing, but they are already mad and don’t act rationally.

Leaving Andy alive seemed pretty risky to me. You can’t know he won’t be able to avoid the zombies (I think you don’t even see them until you decide) and if he does…well there’s somebody out there who knows where you are, who knows your group, has nothing to lose, HATES you and to put it lightly, is not above killing.

The Motor Inn may be somewhat zombieproof, but a single human could easily sneak in at night.

When I first saw the choices selection at the end they were definitely bugged. They were a lot closer to 50% for nearly all the choices. I had no internet at the time so maybe that? But then they weren’t dead on 50

Yeah, there is this. Getting shot is nothing to take lightly regardless of caliber and it was a gutshot too. There’s all these important internal organs around there you need to be careful of. Nope, just walks it off.

He got shot to take him out of the fight and upon concluding the fight, the bullet wound was no longer needed and he can just shrug it off. That’s poor writing. They could’ve taken him out of the fight in a different way that wasn’t such a silly plothole.

You’re assuming the bullet punctured the intestines, thus guaranteeing the wound would quickly go septic. While there’s a high chance that would happen, saying it’s guaranteed is taking it a bit too far.

Treatment time is still an issue though. And you’re not really meant to be walking around with a bullet wound which is clearly bleeding a fair bit (just look at how fast his shirt got covered in blood after he was shot – it was pretty fast!)

If they bring it up in Episode 3 – good, but it still seems like a pretty minor thing considering that he was shot.

From my understanding, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the infection is more of a neurological disease, attacking every cell in the body, and then when you die it jump-starts the brain back up, but destroys your memories and turns you into a flesh-eating zombie (not that there’s anything wrong with zombies). At least, that’s what I got from the CDC episode in the TV series. So drugs wouldn’t help much, just lessen the pain and suffering you’d be feeling.

I freaking hated this choice. There were so many options I could think of just standing there, but the game shoehorns you into this binary choice so they can shame you whatever you pick.

Me: Well, let’s just wait a bit and see if anyone comes back.
Game: You can’t. You’re scared of zombies.
Me: The car is right here. Let’s use it to drive around and look for the owner, protected from zombies.
Game: No.
Me: Okay… how about we mark a trail from the car to the motor inn, then send some people back in an hour to see if anyone’s taken it.
Game: No.
Me: Wow, there are a LOT of boxes here! Let’s take some of it – it’ll ensure our group will survive, and while it will hurt anyone if they were depending on this stuff, it won’t ruin them.
Game: No. I won’t let you leave until you have taken everything.
Me: ….
Game: Now give this hoodie to Clementine so you will feel bad.
Me: I don’t even feel a tiny bit bad.

It was so obviously emotionally manipulative that I didn’t care at the end of it.

I thought the car was probably abandoned. Whoever was in it is out of ear shot of the car and I couldn’t think of a reason to abandon a car like that in the middle of nowhere beyond OMG-RUN. Basically a situation where they couldn’t take the supplies and therefore wouldn’t be back for them. I wanted to leave a note, directions and an invitation to join us just in case they came back.

Yeah, that would have been my choice too: to wait from a safe distance and see who, if anybody, comes around. I mean, for all I knew we could have been condemning to death an entire family of four. I did feel that refusing to partake in the lotting was kindof a stupid thing to do and that I probably should be instilling Clementine with a bit of pragmatic cynicism, but when she didn’t want to do it either, well that setlted it for me (though we may be a bunch of hypocritics because I’m pretty sure we ended up eating from that food anyway).

Also, what (who) were the St. Johns going to feed us if nobody had gotten shot?

And also, I killed both brothers. The first one cause I was mad at him and he was all cut up any way (that Clementine saw me was like a cold knife in the gut, it was great!), the second one was more of a mercy kill. I liked him more (he didn’t look to be an outright psycho), but he had no more family, no more farm, it was best just end it.

The dudes were well-armed serial killers who know where you live. They had reason to hate you in particular after the death of their mother due to your actions. From a rational perspective, it would have been literally suicidal to cut them loose, though as per usual your decision is obviated to minimize state explosion. Also, you know, they presumably would have killed other random people given the chance.

And yes, Re: the car, not having options more nuanced than “loot everything” or “starve” may cut down on state explosion, but makes you resent the writers for passing you the idiot ball.

Having though hard and somewhat long about this, are Zombies cannibals? I mean, their former humans, killing and eating humans, so it stands to reason their cannibals. Or are they technically another species of creature that have supplemented us at the top of the food chain? A question for the ages. Or for a couple minutes.

I’d say true cannibalism, at least, the kind that’s a cultural taboo (as opposed to doing so out of, say, starvation or kind-on-kind in the animal kingdom) requires a conscious decision to choose to eat other thinking beings.

Zombies don’t appear to have any thoughts much beyond “eat” and “find things to eat.” I’d say they don’t count as cannibals, at least, not in the same way as those running the dairy farm.

Why did they decide to keep all their jars of human organs on the same shelf as all of their farm awards and certifications? It’s like they wanted to make an ironic statement about the state of society or something.

I generally think Episode 2 is the weakest of the bunch in terms of writing and thematic content

At least the second episode lets you choose how stuff happens sometimes( who kills Jolene, which of the two of Ben’s companions get to the motel, whether you help Lily or Kenny, whether or not to kill the St. Johns and the station wagon scene ). And that stuff sticks when it’s brought up again in later episodes.

Compare to Episode 5, where the only meaningful choices that affect it are things you did in the previous episode. And even then, those choices mostly end up not mattering anyway.